1999-2000

WPI's Hermanson Elected ASME Fellow

Worcester, Mass. -- James C. Hermanson of Paxton, Mass., associate
professor of mechanical engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute
(WPI), has been elected a Fellow in the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers (ASME). Fellow is the highest elected grade of membership within
ASME, the attainment of which recognizes exceptional engineering
achievements and contributions to the engineering profession. Hermanson
was cited for significant and original contributions to the mechanical
engineering knowledge and education through his research, teaching and
service activities.

Hermanson holds the George I. Alden Chair in Engineering at WPI and
is the recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Program grant to
study the vaporization of liquid fuels in supersonic flow. He is the
principal investigator for a NASA microgravity combustion experiment on
pulsed diffusion flames and also a NASA microgravity fluid physics
experiment on film condensation and heat transfer. The combustion
experiment is a candidate flight experiment for the International Space
Station.

He earned a bachelor's degree in aeronautics and astronautics at the
University of Washington and a master's and doctorate in aeronautics at
the California Institute of Technology. He served as a post-doctoral
fellow at the Institute for Physical Chemistry, University of Goettigen,
Germany where he studied soot formation in premixed flames. He joined the
WPI faculty in 1995.

Hermanson has worked at several well-known research laboratories
including the Applied Physics Laboratory in Washington State and United
Technologies Research Center in Connecticut. As a research scientist at
United Technologies he worked on projects in advanced propulsion and made
important contributions in the areas of fuel injection and fuel/air mixing
in high-speed flows, aircraft fuel thermal stability and ignition, and the
stability and emissions of premixed flames. Prior to his graduate
studies, he worked at the Boeing Aerospace Company in Washington State.

His current research areas include microgravity combustion,
condensation and heat transfer in microgravity, supersonic flow, emissions
of premixed flames, and materials processing.